


by the hands of fae

by Luvandia



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fae & Fairies, Flowers, M/M, Magic, Military Training, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luvandia/pseuds/Luvandia
Summary: But when the breeze tickles his neck, and tousles his hair, and freezes his face when he frowns—he lets it, for some reason.It’s a little less lonely if he pretends it’s someone else.





	by the hands of fae

The reason the wind sings, the boughs creak, the forest weeps—

The magic that keeps the clock turning; it is all by the hands of fae.

  


* * *

  


When Yuzuru is born, it is by fire’s warmth, tucked away in a desolate house somewhere only the wind can follow. And it does try. It lingers by the threshold, blows leaves through the door. These are the few blessings it gives, and with a hint of laughter it then departs.

He doesn’t remember that this is how they first met. 

But when the breeze tickles his neck, and tousles his hair, and freezes his face when he frowns—he lets it, for some reason. 

It’s a little less lonely if he pretends it’s someone else. 

  


* * *

  


At training camp, he makes a friend. 

“Instructor! _Instructor!_ ” 

Whether or not he’s grateful for it is another matter entirely, but Yuzuru stands at attention, smiling in spite of himself when Ibara comes running. The boy’s horns have started coming in, little nubs that protrude from his skull getting sharper by the day. His wings, however, still flutter uselessly against stale air. 

“Any louder and the Lieutenant will start answering your calls instead,” warns Yuzuru, trying not to grin at the prospect. His teeth are blunt, unlike Ibara’s. “Do you want him to punish us again?” 

“No, Instructor!” Ibara responds with a salute. “But it seems like you do, if I may be so bold. Always a sadist at heart.” 

Yuzuru doesn’t grace him with a reply. 

The path back to their dormitory is long and winding, and the trip there is quiet. Newly so. Ibara doesn’t usually keep his mouth shut, because Yuzuru’s lack of response never deters him, but there’s something about the military base that doesn’t sit right with either boy. 

Only when their backs are pressed up against each other on their dingy little mattress, when their bodies finally sag with the blessed opportunity to rest, only then does Ibara break the silence: “They’ve been saying the strangest things, lately.” 

“Buying into their gossip puts you on their level. Don’t drag me down with you,” Yuzuru shoots him a look from over his shoulder, then shuffles closer to the wall. “If you sully my reputation, I’ll be forced to take drastic measures. My young master still awaits my return. I can’t betray him by failing before my career has even begun.” 

“Interested as I am in your life story,” Ibara cuts in, inspecting his nails. “This has nothing to do with that. It’s about the camp itself.” 

The windows rattle. 

“Oh?” 

“Oh, indeed!” Ibara sits up, leaning in for effect. Yuzuru keeps his eyes closed, uninterested. “Did you know, Instructor, that until they unlatch the gates… We’re essentially prisoners to our camp? If we died here, no one would ever know.” 

Cold has started seeping in from outside, and Yuzuru regrets leaving the warmth of another being. But, well, when that being is Ibara… 

“And that,” continues Ibara, in that stupid matter-of-fact voice, “is because our walls are high. It keeps intruders out.” 

Leaves rustle outside, and the branches sway towards their window. It knocks on the glass in a disjointed little rhythm, the prelude to another bad horror story. 

Yuzuru isn’t in the mood for cheap thrills. “I’m aware.” 

“But if it keeps us in, and keeps souls out, and the walls are so high that we train in darkness until the sunlight is right overhead… then, tell me. How is this wind coming through?” 

The world quiets. 

Nothing but the sound of Ibara’s breathing remains. 

Here, the wind has always followed Yuzuru—guiding his shots when he takes aim, pushing at his back when he runs. It’s a constant. A gift to wield, an annoyance to deal with, a companion all the same. 

But for all the things that it’s grown to be, Yuzuru has yet to find out what it is. He does not reply to Ibara that night. Or any of the nights after. 

They fall out and move on. 

  


* * *

  


“Give me your name,” says a boy to Yuzuru in a freakishly low voice. 

Yuzuru walks past him, suppressing an eyeroll, and comes face to face with… the same boy, standing before him with an outstretched hand and a twinkle in his gaze. 

“Give me your name, _please_ ,” says the boy again, in a freakishly high voice. 

Yuzuru stops. Turns around. Thoroughly takes in the narrow and one-track path behind him, and then looks back at the boy, who is somehow _there_. 

“If I look like a court jester to you, then I deeply apologise for how the heavens have failed your sight. I’m not here to entertain the insignificant,” says Yuzuru, keeping a careful eye on the boy. He senses the presence in front of him before he bumps into it, eyes still trained on the mysterious boy with the mysterious voice—but when he looks up, who else has he walked into but the same brat? 

“Insignificant!” The boy grins, despair filling his voice where the highs and lows have left it. “Is that any way to refer to your dear friend, Butler-san?” 

_I don’t have friends_ , Yuzuru thinks but does not say, because the words feel wrong on his tongue and it feels like if he speaks them, he’ll lose. He settles on distance, on coldness. “I don’t know you.” 

The boy tip toes so he looks taller, standing regally. It’s a mockery of how Yuzuru stands, poised with his hands behind his back and shoulders set. “After all the time we’ve spent together? I’m wounded! Hurt! Grieving...!” 

The manor that Yuzuru pledges himself to is still a distance away. 

“I don’t need you,” says Yuzuru, resolute. If he runs, he might make it past the current bane of his existence. “Not anymore.” 

By the time Yuzuru turns back, the boy is gone, unable to hear his words. The wind rushes past his ears, heavy, damp. 

Like tear tracks on his skin. 

  


* * *

  


Before relationships flourish, they must break. 

This is what Yuzuru tells himself when his young master’s disposition grows stormy at the end of another tantrum. Tears are shed. Toys are thrown. For all the maturity Yuzuru has, he’s still young, unequipped with the experience needed to take care of a child—so he gives Tori some breathing room and leaves. 

The wind rushes against him as he goes, but Yuzuru keeps walking, even as footsteps follow. 

“Tch, tch. Don’t you know anything, Butler-san? That’s not how you treat a princess,” says the boy with hair the colour of Yuzuru’s favourite blade, standing ethereal and pretty and with red-rimmed eyes. “Where’s your delicacy? Your chivalry?” 

“Dead in a ditch,” goes Yuzuru, barely able to keep the polite smile on his face. “Same as yours.” 

The boy stops trailing after him. “You don’t mean that.” 

Yuzuru whirls around, fists tight, but the boy just sees right through him. 

A dagger. An army knife. Shrapnel. Any weapon that Yuzuru knows he’s stashed away in his clothes, in little pockets and straps around his thighs—his fingers finally close in on a pair of scissors with rounded edges, good to use with enough force. 

“You don’t mean half the things you think you do,” the boy continues. “Because you’ve lost who you are. Are you a child soldier? A punk butler? Or could you perhaps be… a mere human? How endless the possibilities!” 

The rusted blade is at the boy’s throat before he can take another breath, cutting his introspection short. Yuzuru presses the metal deeper against warm flesh, knowing full well it isn’t sharp enough to slice through. 

But the boy just laughs. 

And when Yuzuru tries to make another move, the handle just bends under his touch like cheap wire. In place of the twin blades from before, flowers sprout from the scissors’ hilt. 

Yuzuru jolts. “What—” 

The boy smiles wider. All the remaining metal in Yuzuru’s hands twists in on itself, then blooms like a bud. Its newly exposed petals are feather soft. 

“A flower just for you. Amazing, isn’t it?” The boy grins a stupid grin. “Cupids like your young master tend towards gifts.” 

For a good long moment, the two of them stand in the empty hallway. 

The first to succumb to the silence is Yuzuru. “If he ends up despising me, I’ll never forgive myself.” 

Even though he speaks in barely a murmur, the boy catches every word with his pointed ears and laughs lightly. He knows what it is like to nurse self-contempt, to doom oneself to a fate they cannot change. But the path Yuzuru walks leads to better roads, and he is meant for things grander than the boy ever got. 

So he says, “Don’t act so pathetic about it. This Hibiki Wataru can’t hold your hand at every turn. Life goes on, Yuzuru.” 

For all the grievances he’s had with the boy, the fae, _Wataru_ , he’s never once been led astray. The guiding winds have always helped him, even if their methods were roundabout. 

Yuzuru’s grip on the flower is unsure, but if it’s for his young master, he has to try. Life will go on for everyone else—his own starts and ends with Tori. 

(Having tired himself out from whatever it is he’d been fighting Yuzuru about, Tori later accepts the flower with a twitching pout and a red nose. 

Wataru lingers by the doorway, waiting. Watching. 

And then Yuzuru smiles wide, and everything is okay again.) 

  


* * *

  


The butler and the boy. 

The human and the fae. 

Yuzuru and Wataru. 

  


* * *

  


Sunset is the guiding light that brings them together, gold spilling against marble and porcelain, sliding down everchanging pathways. Even when the bowels of the Himemiya manor grow frantic, forcing themselves into a new mould every day, Yuzuru follows the lustrous trail of gold every evening and makes his way to the porch. 

Wataru, of course, is already waiting. He hangs off the banister with his legs, tossing petals Yuzuru’s way. “And so he arrives, the man of the hour! Welcome, welcome! Sit down, sit up, do a little dance, and bask in the evening breeze. Yes, this is what it means to be human...!” 

As he’s pelted with flower bits, Yuzuru frowns. “Hibiki-sama, you realise bouquets are expensive?” 

The expression on his face is almost artistic. Wataru wishes he could steal it right off Yuzuru’s face, to keep it like a token of their time together. 

The only reason he doesn’t is because Yuzuru needs his face to emote—and how beautifully he’s learned to, with the way his cheeks glow when he’s happy, the way his eyebrows raise when he’s shown approval, the way red dusts over his cheeks when he’s looked at _just_ so. 

“I wouldn’t dare butcher the flowers you bought me, Yuzuru. Did you forget I can will new ones—” Wataru’s fingers snap. “—into existence?” 

From the fallen petals, roses bloom and take root. Vines snake loosely around Yuzuru’s arms. More and more buds start to open in vivid reds and whites and pinks. Used to the fae’s antics, Yuzuru smiles fondly. 

“Just what fate befell the flowers I gave you, I wonder,” he muses loudly on purpose, and Wataru stumbles in the middle of his spell. The flowers droop, but neither of them notice. 

“I,” starts Wataru, fumbling with his hands suddenly. “Does it matter? A bouquet by any other name smells just as—” 

“Wataru.” 

“I preserved them,” Wataru admits immediately, tucking a lock of hair behind his pointed ear. “So I can keep them forever. Sentiment has me by the throat, alas.” 

The confession brings a wider grin to Yuzuru’s face. It’s smug. 

But he doesn’t say another word, sparing Wataru the embarrassment. Watching dusk turn to night is a wordless endeavour, something they can both enjoy as they stand outside with their hands almost touching, the beginnings of light rain petering out through the foliage. 

Whatever this is, it’s comfortable. It’s routine. 

And if their fingers brush together more than once, well. They don’t talk about that either. 

  


* * *

  


“Do you believe in fate?” is what Yuzuru asks one day. 

He’s making tea in the kitchen, avoiding the sugar pot entirely. Wataru can already hear Tori crying about it, and sneaks a few sugar cubes into his sleeves to taunt the boy with later, thinking over what is probably the heaviest question he has ever received. 

It was fate that left his flickering presence abandoned at birth. Human hands had found him as a seedling, had warmed him, had loved him. Had granted him the freedom to wander around and cause mischief, siphoning life from weeds in his parents’ garden into all their prizewinning blossoms, up until he’d emptied himself of magic and had to run away to recharge. 

He remembers breezing through the air, drawn to the liveliness of the Himemiya mansion the day of Yuzuru’s birth. Imagine, being born already shackled to the obligations ahead of you! And yet, to have been granted purpose, to have been wanted… 

Wataru’s jealousy stirred. 

And yet, here they are years later, lives intertwined and domestic. There’s nothing to be jealous about now, not when he’s wanted just the same. 

Fate brought him to Yuzuru. He can’t denounce it. 

“Oho? In a romantic mood now, are we? Allow me to predict your fate with ease!” With a flourish, Wataru sets the table. Napkins sit on every plate, adorned with clubs and hearts and spades and diamonds, and he gestures grandly at the display. “Pick a card. Any card!” 

Yuzuru doesn’t bat an eyelash, pouring tea into dainty cups. “Come to think of it, I never did give you my name. You’d known what it was from the start, and yet you asked for it so shamelessly.” 

“I was lonely!” Wataru’s pouting. “A proper introduction involves the exchanging of names, does it not? Honestly, thinking I would steal your identity just because I’m of fae descent… You never play along, Yuzuru. How awful!” 

“How _human_ ,” corrects Yuzuru, giving him the side eye. “I, personally, believe fate is malleable.” 

“And that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? Fate is what you shape it to be. We all shape our own paths.” Another wave of Wataru’s arm, and the napkins are plain again. “I had the fortune of mine leading to you.” 

There’s a certain delicacy in the way Yuzuru sets aside a third cup for Wataru—an unspoken invitation for him to make himself at home. Time has softened Yuzuru’s heart. Wataru’s antics give him a much-needed break from worrying over the little things, and it helps. 

The clock will keep turning with no regard for the world. Time will always march on. But the changes that come about, the push of one’s tide that locks into the pull of another, the unfolding of Yuzuru’s life and how Wataru has woven his way into it,— 

The reason the wind sings, the boughs creak, the forest weeps,— 

The magic that keeps the clock turning isn’t magic at all. 

It’s fate.

**Author's Note:**

> i wanna dedicate this to my friend honey who pioneered watayuzu rights!!
> 
> i did not do any research on mythical creatures please dont call me out


End file.
